The present invention generally relates to mobile messaging. More particularly, the present invention relates to methods and apparatus for performing non-native services for a mobile device.
Mobile devices include cellular phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), pocket personal computers, blackberry-type devices, pagers, and the like. Typical services provided by the devices include e-mail retrieval, elementary calendaring, contact list access, voice portal services (stock, weather, and event reservations), car navigation services, and directory dialing dialer services.
Although widely-used, typical mobile devices have many limitations. For example, the mobile devices typically have a limited set of supported services. These services are termed native services. Current typical mobile devices are also closed platforms; thus, users cannot upgrade the mobile devices to include other desired services. Because of this, the user is limited to performing the functions that have been designed for and pre-installed into the mobile device.
Users of mobile devices often use the devices for reading and composing e-mail messages. Although a user can send and receive e-mails, again the mobile devices have many limitations. For example, when attachments are sent with an e-mail, the attachments are typically not included with the e-mail. Thus, a user cannot read the attachment. Further, because the attachment has not been sent with the e-mail, a user cannot forward the attachment to another user or do any processing with the attachment. As still another limitation, only certain formats of documents are natively supported.
In light of the above, what is desired are methods and apparatus for providing mobile devices with support for non-native services.